Assessment and Analysis of Khur-e-khuran International Wetland Environmental Risks Using Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Methods

Wetland ecosystems are stable ecosystems on earth providing considerable ecosystem characteristics. Wetland ecosystems, especially marine coastal wetlands are among the most important and also the most vulnerable world's environmental resources. Which has always been sensitive to the fragility of coastal areas, high population density, and intensive human activities are faced with the threat of destruction. Although, remarkable advances have been observed in the quantity and valuing some key ecosystem products and the services provided by these habitats, there are still some major challenges, with the lack of sufficient knowledge about the relationship between the changes developed in the structure of the ecosystem and the performance of these ecosystems in providing services being the greatest challenge. Based on this, monitoring the changes trend in wetlands and their surrounding lands can be effective in the management of these valuable ecosystems. Investigating the environmental risk is a suitable instrument for evaluating and ensuring understanding of the relationships between stressor factors and environmental effects especially in wetland ecosystems. Environmental risk assessment is an important tool for environmental management in order to reduce the risks in the ecosystems, and to achieve sustainable development that nowadays, in the planning and policies of various countries, is taken into consideration. Today, multi-criteria decision-making methods are employed in evaluating the risk in many studies. Examining the background of applying multi-criteria decision-making methods in risk evaluation indicates that these methods have been used in different cases either alone or together with other methods for risk evaluation. This study aimed to identify the ranking and assessment environmental risks threatening Khur-e-Khuran International Wetlands and Hara Biosphere Reserve, in Hormozgan province in 2015.